So I'm burnt out at work and full of rage every time Balls opens her mouth. Exercise is non existent and my two primary food groups are camel (the filtered kind) and turkey (the wild kind). Between the suicidal drivers I share the road with and the brownish tint of the air, I have reason to believe that New Jersey is shortening my lifespan. Obvious solution?Get the f*ck out of town.
Way the f*ck out: San Diego.
So for the Days of Christmas five through twelve (or Chanukah days three through ten), I'll be about as far away from snow as I can possibly get without finding my birth certificate. (Seriously, I've lost it… I truly am trapped in this militaristic state.) I plan on binge drinking with eurotrash at the hostel, saturating every pore with skin-chafing-wedding-dress-white sand and possibly dropping in to see Jeremy Enigk live.I'm going to get away... most people vacation to get somewhere.
- "Oooh, I've never been to Paris, let's go to France!"
- "Elvis was a god! Nashville, here I come."
- "I live for boobies and sin—how much did you say that flight to Las Vegas was?"
- "Why can't these foreigners learn english?"
Rarely cited as the justification for an overpriced plane ticket, the meals I've had while vacationing have consistently been my most vivid (and cherished) memories. Mmmm, that first time I tried hush puppies and sweet tea… that Dim Sum in SF where we ordered curried chicken claws… the Popeye's chicken that saved us from certain death in Gettysburg… all those lovely coconuts at that luau and how much I wanted to put them in my mouth….I could go on forever but I guess I'll save a few for actual comments. So tell me, my fellow OWFLers, what have been your most memorable meals on vacation? What's your opinion on fish tacos? Do you know where my Birth Certificate is? And of course. . . WFL???
75 comments:
Great Post M. Pretty pictures, links-a-plenty, and here when I turn on my computer in the morning.
A Triple Plus effort
and as for the content:
I most remember the first time I ate Conch.
My family went to the Bahamas for Spring Break when I was in 8th grade. I broke my wrist about 5 days before we went down there, so I couldn't get in the freaking water. What's the point of being n the Bahamas if you can't swim I ask.
Any wise, we went to a local joint and got some Conch fritters. Deep fried giant ocean snail. I think deep fried is the way to go when you try a new form of food.
After I got the fritters, I went with the Conch chowder, then some sort of fish that I didn't eat.
After that I didn't eat Conch until my family moved to to the Conch Republic and I became an official ambassador.
I want to go on vacation now M. Thanks for planting that seed.
Now all I need is a job so I can afford a trip.
m, big 'plause for the post. I feel like you just sang to me the immortal words of those sages and poets Color Me Badd: "I wanna hypertext you up!"
Hmm. I must be feeling a touch queer this morning.
The most striking vacation meal I've had in recent memory was actually in San Francisco earlier this year. I went on vacation, in part, to visit a buddy of mine who was in intensive care for a month or so and, in part, to clear my head after breaking up with my girlfriend of about two years. The end-of-relationship travails aside, I was reveling in my newly rediscovered freedom from her uncompromising aversion to Mexican food and sushi. Between ICU visiting hours in SF, I met up with an old roommate who took me to one of those hole-in-the-wall mom-n-pop sushi joints with no sign for dinner. The combination of coming off of a lengthy, de facto mandatory sushi fast AND the ridiculous quality of the fish those folks laid out literally brought tears to my eyes. (The fact that it was 70 and sunny in SF while DC was under a snow emergency didn't hurt either.)
I have never been more confident in the rightness of a breakup than in that moment. Thank you, nameless sushi master!
Today for lunch, I will have, according to the Banquet Event Order sitting immediately to my left on the table in this program office at the Harrisburg Hilton:
Pizza Lunch Buffet
- Tossed Garden Greens with Assorted Toppings and Dressings
- An Assortment of Pizzas to Include Cheese, Pepperoni, Sausage and Vegetarian
- Chef's Selection of Dessert
- Iced Tea/ Milk
- Coffee/Tea/Decaf
AND, I get to eat with 183 ninth-graders. You're totally jealous...
Can I just point out the ridiculousness of dating someone for two years who won't eat sushi? A guy like that wouldn't last 2 days with me. And a guy who only ate California roll would last exactly as long as it took to realize that he was that guy, so maybe a week.
Sometime mid-college a couple friends, their friends and myself went down to Daytona Beach for Spring Break, on the Cheap. We drove from upstate NY in a beaten up volvo and the tape player died just before we got to GA. This relegated us to listening to Southern AM radio for the remainder of the trip down and the entire trip back up. It was a Ween’s album “God-Ween-Satan”… anyway.. the trip was largely a failure as our springbreak apparently lined up with two other schools in the country (there was no one down there), the weather was not too nice and our “cabin right on the beach” was about 3 miles away from any form of water and must have been some type of sublet in a retirement community…
But.
On our way back up, one of the guys we went down with said that we had to stop at this famous steak place (the way he said it, I assume that was his entire reason for coming on vacation with us). So we somehow made it to this place two hours out of the way and promptly ordered a “king” steak each.
God… it was like a fing movie. It was like 2 inches thick, two feet wide by sixteen inches long.. and Possibly the worst cut of meat ever with forearm sized chunks of gristle and sinew as thick as a finger. It had this amazing gradient of Burnt to Raw that seemed to follow little pattern throughout the meat. Every one of us finished it. Half of us vomited it later. I highly suggest it as a side trip to any vacation.
lt, lessons learned: sometimes you gotta walk down a path before you realize it doesn't lead where you want to go, and - let's be honest - what with my penchant for borrowing mixed tapes (which I listened to on the drive up to Harrisburg yesterday...thank you), I wouldn't last two hours with you. Of course, whenever you're ready to give it a try...
I was fittin' to ax what the hell are you doing in Harrisburg, but I have been able to figure it out by your clues.
Community service for the molestation charges in Pannsylvania.
That's cool man.
Elvis = Memphis, but good post, M.
I have more on this, a lot more, in fact - but I've been up for 24 hours (save a nap I took at my desk between 4 and 6 or so this morning) wooting off, and I can't tear my attention away for too long, lest I miss the Bag O' Crap.
EQ, are you going to hh@bb tonight? I have a present for you.
Hm, vacation meals. I went to Spain in December for a wedding & had both the freakiest & bestest meals ever. The freakiest was at this local place where my friend got drunk & yelled at the waiter, then his wife was yelling at him (the hubby, not the waiter) & everyone was uncomfortable, and we hadn't even gotten our food yet. That wasn't the freaky part. Now I love escargot, with all their buttery & garlicky goodness. I'm pretty much a traditionalist when it comes to how they're served, but I'll give other ways a try. So I ordered snails as my appetizer (b/c who makes a whole meal out of snails). My understanding of escargot is that the snails are removed & cleaned from their original shell & then stuff into cleaned out shells that are uniform in size & color. These snails had apparently been plucked right off the rocks at the beach outside as they were way bigger in relation to their shell size than any escargot I had ever had. And when you pulled them out, you could tell they were still all wrapped up inside the spiral of the shell. I had to stop eating them when I realized that one of the snails had gotten cooked with his little tentacles out, so he looked exactly like a real snail. I was so disturbed. Please! Serve it in a shell, but don't let it look like what it is!! Argh!!
And the best meal was an appetizer I ordered the last night I was there. It was foie gras (yes, I'm evil for all you peta types out there) and it was 3 huge slices of it with a bunch of crusty bread & some fig compote. My main course was good, but not nearly as satisfying. Man, I wish I had ordered the foie gras entree. I can't even imagine how much foie gras would have been on that plate. God, it was orgasmic. Seriously.
Oh, geez, how could I forget? When we would visit my grandparents in the Big Easy we would get magical muffulata! Those were really the best tasting sammies ever. Sigh!
I need help. We have a brown bag lunch (siiiiiiiiigh, no free lunch) & I don't know what I want. Well, I do, but I can't get muffulata around here. Help me OWFLers! What should I get for lunch?!?
In case you forgot, or never knew.
Happy Hour at Bravo Bravo after work tonight. You know, to see Bob.
Followed by good times at Adam's Mill.
This all takes place in capital city, but if y'all ain't up in this joint, you can play along at home.
In Chicago, you can go to:
Bravo Tapas Lounge
2047 W Division St
Chicago, IL 60622
then go to
Adam's Mill Historic Site 4612 County Road 75E
Cutler, Indiana
46920
In Houston play at home:
Have an event catered by
Bravo Elegant Events
281-421-3551
then:
Get yer law talkin' done down at the Chuck D. Adams Law Mill.
The Adams Professional Building, 515 Spencer Highway,
South Houston, Texas 77587
In New York Play at home by:
Start off at Bravo Pizza
6 E 42nd St # 1
New York, NY 10017
(212) 867-4960
then:
get a Sam ADAMS at the Gin MILL
442 Amsterdam Ave.
If you're in a different city than those... do what I did. Google it up and find out how to play HH@BB in your own town.
Bravo sunshine! Beautiful!
Well played, sunshine.
lt, no, I won't be there because I'll be exploring The Harrisburg Edition of tonight's festivities:
I'm gonna slide around the corner from the Hilton at 5PM and craft some message or generate some action over cheap drinks at:
Bravo Group
Communications + Government Affairs
20 North Market Square
Suite 800
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17101
And, the best I'll be able to do after that is to find somebody named Adam so he and I can go raise some hell down the river a couple of miles at
href="http://alpha.dickinson.edu/departments/amos/mosaic01steel/eric/steelmill.html">this place.
And, after this conversation, I might actually slip out later this evening and find myself some sushi. I bet Harrisburg sushi is awesome.
Man, that didn't go right.
I meant this place.
"Dad, why'd you bring me to a gay steel mill?"
I'm still waiting for lunch help.
"Hot stuff! Coming through."
lizturtle: one of my (weird) co-workers thinks you should track down some tomato soup and (inexplicably) a peanut butter sandwich for your brown bag office lunch.
lt: how about a gyro? i want a gyro. instead i have setteld with a double cheesburger and fries
Hm, that is. I might go with the peanut butter idea thought & hit Mr. Hibachi's for some sticky rice & chicken with peanut sauce. Hm, that sounds really good. And I haven't been there since last winter, I think.
Which raises a new question: would you ever purcahse a peanut butter sandwich from somewhere? That strikes me as one of those dishes that you only make at home.
lizturtle: I will now add my suggestion for your brown bag office lunch. I think you should get an oversized salad with lots of non-traditional salad things like eggs and bacon on it. Maybe even turkey. Oooh. A chef salad. A big one. Then, when you guys are talking about your feelings or whatever your brown bag lunch is about, you can occasionally launch a piece of lunchmeat with dressing on to the lapels of your number-pushing colleagues.
I meant to say "that is weird."
Hm, gyro sounds good, too. Hmmm. It may come down to what other people I go out with want more . . . .
Yeah, it's too cold for salad. I ruled that one out immediately.
"Lapels"? Dude, it's casual Friday.
I get pb&j at potbelly.
Right. I forgot it's cold outside. I haven't left the hotel since Wednesday night.
I still like the idea of soup, and I still like the idea of spraying SOMEthing on your colleagues' shirts.
Where the hell is everyone? Working or something?
Mmmmm . . . I got the red cock sauce, too. This is hitting the spot. I better stop eating it so I'll have something to do in the meeting in 9 minutes.
HT, I just applied to another jobby here at the institution. When I came back the number of comments had doubled.
best travel food ever: street vendor in seoul, korea. we ate korean sushi roll (no raw fish, but other goodies wrapped up in seaweed), kim chi, and hot udon soup for $4. you can watch the nice grandma cook it all up, and it is just heavenly.
the other magical thing we got off the street vendors in seoul was a hot dog on a stick. but instead of a corn dog, it was crinkle cut french fry dog!!!!! the fries were sort of smushed together and molded to the outside of the dog and deep fried. it was absolutely brilliant.
anyone want to go to lunch today downtown? today was pay day, and i'm hankering for a really good meal.
Thanks for the Invite LaChoi. I have to respectfully decline though.
Today for e was the opposite of payday. Bill day, so I'm basically broke, and I fear I would just hold you back from what you reall want.
Plus there are protesters outside my building, and it is hilarious to listen to their stupid Hippie rantings and semi organized chants.
Stupid Hippies.
"Hey, hey! Ho, Ho! Personal hygiene's got to go!"
I'm about to go cut in line for my pizza buffet. Take that, ninth-graders!
work work work!
great post m.
I have lots of good eating trips in mind.
mikey said conch already but I had a similar experience with conch in the bahamas except it was fresh conch salad prepared on the top of an old oil drum on the beach. It was delicious. During that same trip after another lunch a voodoo priestess put a curse on me. good times.
More food trips later.
starving for lunch now and negotiating a trip to the Indian Experience with lachoi. Anyone else interested?
miso: find some poprocks
Pop rocks excite any bored stomach.
Your stomach and me, Miso. That meeting was deadly. My eyelids are about 10 pounds each. Plus when I got back to my desk it was chilly, so I think it was a case of the conference room being exceedingly warm. Yawn.
Perhaps not shockingly, my lunch sucked. When I finally made it to the mass-quantity pizza buffet table, all that was left was bullshit veggie pizza that was almost entirely olives. You remember earlier this week when I was reevaluating all of my food prejudices? Yeah, well fuck olives. Especially black olives on pizza. That shit is gross.
And, of course, right after I finished, they brought out some hot sausage pizza. It was pretty gross, too, but it was better than my cold olive pizza.
Fucking fuckers. I had to go up to my room to rinse my mouth out with the remnants of today's pint of Old Grand-Dad just to kill the taste. And to satisfy my burgeoning alcoholic needs.
I don't suppose this counts as a vacation, necessarily, but about a week after I moved to a little mountain town in Montana, my neighbors (which were few and far between) hada chimney fire. A couple of us saw it and ran over to help them put it out. (As lifelong residents of their place, they were much less excited about the event than we were.) In order to thank us, Mrs. Monty cooked us dinner the following week. We had elk medallions with mashed potatoes and green beans. Now, I grew up in south Georgia, and I know a thing or two about dining on game, but you haven't eaten elk until you've eaten elk prepared by a remarkably talented cook who has been not only cooking but cleaning them since she was old enough to hold a knife. It was basically a tenderloin rolled in cracked pepper and roasted slowly. It was the most delightful piece of meat I've ever put in my mouth. Hell, it may have been the most delightful meat I've ever put in ANYone's mouth.
I miss Montana right at the beginning of hunting season when people should be clearing out their freezers to make room for their new kill. There's something sublime to come home from work and find a stack of white-tail steaks or a moose roast sitting in the snow on your doorstep.
absolutely stuffed with indian experience's delicious buffet foods. jo and i had fun talking about crazy people and my current obsessions with SWC. good times.
im so sleepy, and my tummy feels tight.
Someone please come to my house and tear me away from my computer and this God forsaken woot-off?! I've been at this for over 24 hours now, and all I have to show for it is a wifi detector. (I don't know why I bought it, I really don't.)
Save me!
On topic, pulled pork sandwiches and macaroni salad in hawaii. Some place on the east side of Oahu, on the side of the road.
For the most part, I believe that vacation food is overrated. Or rather, food in "good" restaurants in "vacation spots" is overrated. But say, I take a little minivacay in Chicago and go to Hot Dougs - delicious, but not really "vacation food." Or, the last time I was in SF, I revisited some places in the old hood in Half Moon Bay and had amazing sushi. But does that count for our purposes today?
HT! Resist! Turn off the computer!!
Besides, aren't you missing a Magnum PI episode?
HT. If you leave now and walk, you can get to Bravo Bravo and warm the place up for us. that will also pull you away from whatever the hell a Whoot-off is.
I can watch Magnum AND Woot. Though, I've had BET on all day.
Absolutely, HT. I totally agree. It's why hotel restaurants usually suck.
Damn. I miss that about being unemployed and not working. (I am still unemployed, but I have to get up and go to work every day dammit!)
the daily fix of Magnum PI, and the occasional Quantum Leap mini marathon.
Why is there no Saint Donald P. Ballasario?
Gol Damn. This Friday is taking forever to crawl to 5:00... at least from my perspective it is.
From www.woot.com FAQ page:
I see some orange flashing lights on the main page – what do they mean?
No, you aren't seeing a side effect from your allergy medication. You have found a Woot-Off, a short term frenzied mutation of our product posting procedure. In Woot-Off mode, a new product is launched immediately after the sellout of the previous deal. There is a half-Woot-life of 12 hours maximum on any product within a Woot-Off that does not sell out. The number of Woot-Off items, sequence, and quantity will not be announced. When Woot-Off mode is over, the orange lights will disappear and our normal schedule will resume. Depending on its success, this may be a mode we would go into once or twice a month for a relatively short duration of time (24-72 hours generally.)
This is the madness I've gotten caught up in.
Just a quick Hi! Eating falafel from the falafel king...not to shabby.
Have fun in Gainesville Lady A.
See you at the mill.
Of course it's the wrong Gainesville, but it's a good name anywise
I can see being addicted to that site . . . once they actually put something up that I want to buy, of course.
Well, LT - it's normally one product per day, unless there's a woot off in progress.
Now, the fun part is that 99% of the time during the Woot Off there is something called "Random Crap" (known to wooters as "Bag of Crap" or "Bandolier of Carrots" or "Blinged Out Cabbage" or "Blue Oyster Cult" etc.). It's a dollar, and you can buy three (and are encouraged to do so). Items included in past BOC's have included everything from beer koozies to 40 in. LCD tvs to Roombas to Barbie vacuum cleaners - you just never know. So you buy 3, pay a flat rate of $5 shipping and hope.
I am waiting for a BOC. It will be mine. Oh, yes. It will be mine.
now will the BOC be the same thing? I.e. you order 3 things and you get 3 beer coozies? or 3 lcd tvs? or could you get 1 coozie & a tv & a watch? hmmmmmm. i already know i won't finish this stuff until monday...
WHY AREN'T PEOPLE BUYING THIS PIECE OF CRAP WATCH SO WE CAN GET ON TO THE NEXT ITEM?!?!?!? ARGH!!!!!!
HHAHAHA - I have converted both LT and LC to woot mania.
LT, it will be like, one tv, one shoelace and one koozie.
Of course, I've never won one before, b/c they sell out in like, a minute.
This watch is so effin' ugly...
No shit! No wonder it's going so slowly (no offense to anyone who's buying one . . . .).
I curse the person who introduced me to wooting off, like you will someday curse me.
"One day"?? Try right now.
Hey, how long after selling out do they put up another woot-off offer?
Ahhh, busy day at work.
What is the woot business? Never heard of it. Except in the "there it is" context.
On a trip to NYC I was introduced to Sushi. I was in my early 20's and had never had sushi before, I always thought it was snob food.
Well after that awesome dinner I either became a snob or broadened my horizons, cuz I love's me some sushi.
Today I had a panini, spicy tuna with sprouts, carrots and some other thing. good
You have to abuse refresh or F5 - it's usually about 30 seconds to a minute before the next item is up.
WD, that's "whoomp". In that context, I think saying 'woot' would qualify you immediately for dork status.
Watchdog. I think the Marshall would be upset that you don't know his favorite song is in fact
Whoomp! (there it is)
for shame WD, for shame
LITTERMAID SELF CLEANING CAT BOX FOR 69.99!!!!!!!
Double Zing! In your face
I think you all should be shot for knowing the real words to "XXX" there it is.
More like, POOT there it is...
can't make HH today. : (
have fun y'all. Stay warm
No es bueno WD, Te vere mas tarde.
Damn you, HT!!! I saw the Eeeeee monkey wine & had to buy it! Even before Peep's order! Damn me & my impulse buys. And I have like 3 million bottles of wine at home. Argh!
I bought it too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
Ok, wtf??? I put all my stuff in & now it's stuck on the order status screen . . . and when I go to 'my account' it says I haven't bought anything. Dammit!! If I don't get my monkey . . . !
Oh thank god, it went through!
what the hell is a stuntmonkey and how does he get "super-simian-slingshot action"
Hey, should we all chip in & buy a monkey for Brian? Or did he get a replacement one already?
dude, they have a whole wine.woot.com site! How can it not be good?!
Super-simian sling-action rocks. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Um, except it doesn't work. Or all the OWFLers are retarded. One of the two.
Peep, you got one to work?? How did you figure it out? All of sitting there couldn't! Oh, right, you were cornholing. Wait. Right? I forget. Alcohol has addled my brain.
Didn't someone send one to Brian?
But, did he ever get it?
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